Advisory Council
The Advisory Council is a strategic advisory body made up of global leaders, policymakers, diplomats, scholars, and practitioners. It provides guidance on regional and global trends, supports the Forum’s long-term growth and positioning, and offers perspectives that inform its priorities. Council members also help strengthen partnerships by connecting the Forum with influential leaders, institutions, and stakeholders across Asia and beyond.
Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, Chair of Advisory Council
Former Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the UN
Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury is a Bangladeshi diplomat most noted for his work on global peace, championing the rights of women and children and development in the poorest nations and acclaimed as the Founder of the New York-based civil society organizations coalition called the Global Movement for The Culture of Peace (GMCoP). Ambassador Chowdhury’s legacy and leadership in the service of global community are boldly imprinted in his pioneering initiatives - in March 2000 as the President of the Security Council for the political and conceptual breakthrough leading to the groundbreaking UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on “Women and Peace and Security”; and - in September 1999 for adoption of the landmark programme on the Culture of Peace by the UN General Assembly. He is widely recognized for his leadership in steering the nine-month-long negotiations which resulted in the consensus on the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace. As Chairman of the negotiations, he introduced the agreed text for adoption by the 53rd session of UN General Assembly on 13 September 1999. He is highly respected for his longstanding and dedicated contribution to the follow up and implementation of this landmark document. He has been a member of the UN High Level Advisory Group for the Global Study on the 15-year implementation of Security Council resolution 1325 (2000) and also was one of the 12-member Asia-Pacific Regional Advisory Group on Women, Peace and Security hosted in Bangkok. Prior to his appointment, in March 2002 by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for the most vulnerable countries of the world, Chowdhury completed his assignment (1996–2001) as Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations in New York, serving concurrently also as Bangladesh's Ambassador to Chile, Nicaragua, Peru and Venezuela, as well as Bangladesh's High Commissioner to the Bahamas and Guyana. Chowdhury served as President of the UN Security Council, President of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Executive Board, Vice-President of the Economic and Social Council of the UN in 1997 and 1998, Chairman of the Fifth (Administrative and Budgetary) Committee of the UN General Assembly in 1997–1998 and the Senior Special Adviser to the General Assembly's 66th President in 2011-2012. In March 2003, the Soka University of Tokyo, Japan conferred to Ambassador Chowdhury an Honorary Doctorate for his work on women’s issues, child rights and culture of peace as well as for the strengthening of the United Nations. In May 2012, he received a Doctor of Humane Letters honoris causa degree from the Saint Peter’s University of the United States. In May 2021, the University of La Verne, California, USA conferred on him an Honorary Doctorate for his work on global peace and development. He is recipient of the U Thant Peace Award, UNESCO Gandhi Gold Medal for Culture of Peace, first recipient of the Spirit of the UN Award in 2007, University of Massachusetts Boston Chancellor’s Medal for Global Leadership for Peace in 2012, Gandhi-King-Ikeda Community Builders Prize in 2015, 2018 Global Women’s Peace Award, 2020 Robert Muller Global Peace Prize, recipient of the inaugural Global Citizen Award in 2021 and Visionary Leadership Award presented by civil society organizations also in 2021. Ambassador Chowdhury is the first recipient of the IMPACT Leadership 21’s Global Summit Frederick Douglass Award Honoring Men Who Are Champions For Women’s Advancement in October 2013. He has been a member of the UN High Level Advisory Group for the Global Study on the 15-year implementation of Security Council resolution 1325 (2000) and also was one of the 12-member Asia-Pacific Regional Advisory Group on Women, Peace and Security hosted in Bangkok. He is the President of the Advisory Council and a member of the Board of Directors of the Global Peace Education Network (GPEN) since 2025. He is also a member of the Advisory Council of the National Peace Academy in the US, a Patron of the Committee on Teaching About the UN (CTAUN), New York and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Orlando-based Global Peace Film Festival (GPFF). He is the Chairman of the Global Forum on Human Settlements since 2008 registered in New York and the Chairman of the Friends of the United Nations Asia-Pacific based in Tokyo. He has been decorated by the Government of Burkina Faso in West Africa with the country’s highest honour “L’Ordre National” in 2007 in Ouagadougou for his championship of the cause of the most vulnerable countries. Ambassador Chowdhury has structured curricula and taught courses on “The Culture of Peace” at the Soka University of America from 2009 to 2019 and the City University of New York in 2008 and 2009. He also served as an Adjunct Professor at the School of Diplomacy, Seton Hall University of the United States.
Mr. Mohsen Bel Hadj Amor
Former Chairman of the International Civil Service Commission (ICSC) and Under-Secretary-General of the UN
Mohsen Bel Hadj Amor is a distinguished Tunisian statesman and internationally respected leader in global public administration, best known for his long tenure as Chairman of the International Civil Service Commission (ICSC) of the United Nations. Elected by the UN General Assembly, he served at the rank of Under-Secretary-General and chaired the ICSC from 1991 to 2006, providing over 15 years of leadership in the governance of the UN common system. Before his election to the ICSC, Bel Hadj Amor built a prominent career within the UN, notably at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP), where he served as Director of Personnel (Human Resources) from 1981 to 1990. In this role, he led HR policy, personnel management, and administrative modernization initiatives, strengthening institutional efficiency and human resources systems across a diverse international workforce. Prior to his UN career, Bel Hadj Amor served as Permanent Representative of Tunisia to the UN specialized agencies in Rome, including the FAO, WFP, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and the World Food Council (WFC). He also chaired the Finance Committee of FAO and WFP for six years and served as Special Representative of the FAO Director-General on various international negotiation missions. A career diplomat, he won a record of seven elections within the UN system and undertook professional and academic missions in more than seventy countries. As Chairman of the ICSC, Bel Hadj Amor guided the Commission through more than a decade of institutional development and reform, contributing significantly to the modernization of the UN common system. Under his leadership, the ICSC strengthened frameworks governing salaries, allowances, and conditions of service across the UN system, while promoting coherence, fairness, and professional standards. He regularly represented the Commission before the UN General Assembly and its Fifth Committee, advocating equitable staffing, gender balance, transparency, ethical governance, institutional independence, and meritocracy. He supported recruitment systems designed to attract and retain highly qualified talent for international civil service in accordance with the principles of the UN Charter. Respected in international governance circles, Bel Hadj Amor is recognized for fostering dialogue, institutional balance, and consensus among Member States and UN entities. His leadership reflected discretion, technical rigor, and a steadfast commitment to multilateral cooperation. His legacy is marked by the strengthened authority and credibility of the ICSC as a cornerstone institution of the UN system, upheld with integrity. After his ICSC tenure, Bel Hadj Amor served as Vice Chairman of the South-South Steering Committee for Sustainable Development (SS-SCSD), supporting initiatives that advanced sustainable development through South-South cooperation, with a focus on poverty reduction, hunger eradication, education, and humanitarian action for vulnerable populations. Bel Hadj Amor received a multidisciplinary education spanning Tunisia, France, and the United States, including studies at Collège Sadiki in Tunis, the Institut des Hautes Études in Tunis, the Université de Paris (Sorbonne), and Columbia University in New York, with academic focus on humanities and international affairs. He is fluent in Arabic, French, English, Spanish, and Italian, and possesses strong multilingual proficiency across major international working languages. He has been awarded several distinctions, including Officier de l’Ordre de la République Tunisienne, Officier de l’Ordre du Mérite Agricole Français, and the Doctor Honoris Causa diploma from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO).
Dr. Krista Millay
Vice President for Community Impact at the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona
Dr. Krista Millay is an equity-driven leader with more than 20 years of experience across the higher education, nonprofit, and philanthropic sectors. She currently serves as Vice President for Community Impact at the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona, where she leads strategic grantmaking, community partnerships, and initiatives focused on advancing equity and long-term social impact. Krista holds a Doctor of Theology in Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics from Boston University, with academic work informed by feminist and justice-centered approaches to leadership and social change. Throughout her career, she has led local, national, and cross-sector initiatives that strengthen civic engagement, expand access to opportunity, and elevate the leadership and voices of women and historically marginalized communities. A skilled facilitator, strategist, and public thought leader, Krista’s writing and advocacy have appeared in Ms. Magazine, HuffPost, The Conversation, and Women’s eNews, among other national outlets. Her work is grounded in the belief that collaborative leadership, inclusive dialogue, and collective care are essential to building a more just and connected global future. Krista brings to the Asia Global Forum Advisory Council a deep commitment to women’s leadership, cross-cultural engagement, and community-centered systems change.
Ms. Saroja Sivachandran
Founder and Executive Director, Centre for Women & Development (CWD), Jaffna, Sri Lanka
Saroja Sivachandran is a women’s rights and peace advocate from Jaffna, in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province. In 1988 she founded the Centre for Women & Development (CWD), a national NGO, and has led it as Executive Director for more than three decades. CWD works with war-affected women and women-headed households on land rights, legal aid, violence against women, and women’s political participation and peacebuilding. She began her career in education, as an Assistant Lecturer in Geography at the University of Peradeniya, then as a Senior Lecturer at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute in Colombo, and later as Director of the State Bank of India Adult Education Institute in Chennai. She holds a BA (Hons) from the University of Peradeniya and an MA from the University of Jaffna, studied law at the University of Colombo, and completed courses in peace and conflict resolution at Uppsala University, Sweden, and in international relations in Colombo. Saroja has carried the voices of women from northern Sri Lanka to the United Nations. She has attended sessions of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and spoken at its side events on two occasions, including in March 2017, and in October 2025 she signed a civil society statement to the UN Security Council on women, peace and security in Sri Lanka. She has taken part in international conferences across Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas, and her views have been quoted by IRIN, Inter Press Service and The New Humanitarian. Her regional and international roles include past service on the Bureau of South Asians for Human Rights (SAHR) and on the Board of the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR), and membership of the International Peace Committee of Women in South Korea. In Sri Lanka she is a Council Member of the National Peace Council and a Board Member of PAFFREL, the election monitoring organisation. She has served on the Council of the University of Jaffna and on a Ministry of Women’s Affairs committee, and is a former President of the NGO Council in Jaffna. Her work has been recognised by President Chandrika Kumaratunga and with the Manton Award in New Delhi for short films documenting violence against women. She has published research on female-headed households, land issues and the dowry system in northern Sri Lanka, and her meetings with war widows on political participation helped women enter local government.
Mr. Valentin Tapsoba
Former Regional Director for Southern Africa UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
Valentin Tapsoba is a senior humanitarian and development leader with nearly three decades of experience in international organizations, public sector reform, crisis management, and refugee protection. Throughout his career with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), he has held senior leadership positions across Africa, Asia, Europe, and headquarters environments, overseeing complex humanitarian operations in politically sensitive and high-risk contexts. Most recently, he served as Regional Director for Southern Africa, providing strategic oversight and support to operations across sixteen countries and leading emergency preparedness, refugee response, and institutional transformation initiatives. Prior to this role, he served as Director of the UNHCR Regional Bureau for Africa in Geneva, where he guided strategic planning, resource allocation, policy implementation, and partnerships across the continent. Mr. Tapsoba has extensive expertise in humanitarian response, organizational reform, public sector capacity building, strategic planning, governance, resource mobilization, and leadership of multicultural teams. His career has included senior assignments in Ethiopia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Burundi, Afghanistan, Guinea, and Switzerland, giving him a deep understanding of both field operations and global policy frameworks. He holds master’s degrees in International Transactions from George Mason University and Economics from the University of Ouagadougou. He is recognized for his commitment to inclusive leadership, operational excellence, and sustainable solutions for displaced populations and vulnerable communities.